A wake-up call that may inspire retirees to spend their kids’ inheritances.
Certified appraiser Stewart (Collect Value Divest, 2016, etc.) doles out advice for baby boomers whose adult children reject their family heirlooms.
Stewart’s slim guide begins with her own story: after her son announced his engagement, she, without asking his opinion, spent more than $2,000 shipping family treasures, such as china and crystal, to him and his future wife. She was ready to send more when they “kindly but firmly” told her to stop. The first chapter then lays out the top 10 items that millennials don’t want, from books to fine porcelain dinnerware. As lifestyles have changed, writes Stewart, so have tastes and object valuations; for example, digital-savvy millennials don't feel an attachment to old tomes. They also lead mobile lives and don’t care for dark, heavy antique furniture. So what’s a boomer to do with all this rejected stuff? Chapter 2 lays out a “Five Piles Theory” of organizing and downsizing, beginning with what can be sold. If one is planning to donate items, Chapter 3 advises readers not to second-guess that decision. At times, this unblinking guide leaves the impression that the younger generation is erasing its heritage; in one sad anecdote, for instance, a 26-year-old seems more interested in dressing up for Star Trek conventions than inheriting and appreciating her great-grandmother’s steamer trunk. However, although Stewart acknowledges that there are exceptions, she still offers sweeping generalizations about millennials and other generations; many readers from Generation X, for instance, will be surprised to find out that they supposedly have “hired-out” housekeeping. The author’s voice is friendly but without sentimentality—she calls family photos “paper ephemera,” for example, and she sometimes scolds readers: “You have to face facts! Your grown children value a mobile lifestyle, uncluttered comfort, and the aesthetics of prevailing technology.” It’s a quick, easy read, though, which is brimming with color photographs of smiling people and lovely objects, such as antique dolls. It also contains some sound advice; for example, Stewart points out that local theater costume shops may want donated linens.
A wake-up call that may inspire retirees to spend their kids’ inheritances.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9981025-3-5
Page Count: 95
Publisher: Flandricka House Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
